Financial Management

Financial Management in Lightpost tracks contributions, income, expenses, and budgets, with reports for leaders and year-end statements for members.

What is Financial Management?

Financial Management in Lightpost tracks all forms of contributions and income (checks, cash, online gifts, etc.) as well as expenses and budgets. It works in conjunction with the Online Giving feature — online gifts are recorded automatically.

Financial Management is not an effort to replace QuickBooks or similar applications. If you need to track payroll and other things, those tools that have decades of experience being built are the right tool for the job.

Where to Find It

In the Admin sidebar, open Finance under the Data heading. The Finance page includes:

• Add Expenses and Add Contributions buttons, and a Reports menu.

• Income and Expenses totals for the selected month and year, compared with the previous month.

• A Date Posted / Date Created selector that controls which date the totals use (defaults to Date Posted).

• Budgets progress for each category with a budget in the current year. Click a budget to see its transactions.

Income Tracking

Record all income against income categories (or "buckets") that you create yourself, such as:

• "General Contribution"

• "Special Contribution"

• "Missions Support"

• "Building Fund"

Data entry is fast, including support for check readers that use keyboard emulation. It can be as quick as: scan the check, enter the amount, press "Enter", and you're ready for the next entry.

Recording Contributions & Expenses

Expense Tracking & Budgets

Record expenses against expense categories and set a yearly budget for each category. Elders and deacons can see their budget standing in near real-time.

Income and expenses are organized into Finance Categories, which is also where you set the yearly budgets.

Finance Categories

Importing

Bring in contributions or expenses from a CSV file, such as an export from a previous system or a bank.

Importing Transactions

Reports

The Reports menu includes a Weekly Report, a Budget Summary, and an Income & Expense by Month report, each with a PDF download.

Finance Reports

Contribution Statements

Generate year-end contribution statements, email them to members, and let members download them from the web app.

Contribution Statements

Permissions

Finance access is granted through Roles:

Permission	Allows
View Financial Records	View the Finance page, finance reports, and contribution statements.
Manage Financial Records	Add, import, edit, and delete transactions; manage categories and budgets; access the Online Giving pages.
View Contribution Amounts	See individual contribution amounts, including the Online Giving Contribution Report and statement contents.

Reimbursement Requests (Coming Soon)

Members will be able to take a photo of an expense they paid on behalf of the church and submit a reimbursement request from the mobile app. This feature is not yet available.